Through the Window

Having taken a pleasurable detour toward grinding synth pop on his 2011 releases Bermuda Drain and Time's Arrow, with Through the Window, Dominick Fernow convincingly throws himself to the growling hounds of techno.

The path from black metal to techno via noise is so well-travelled these days that you could, if you were feeling melodramatic, call it an exodus. It's a trip the now L.A.-based Dominick Fernow has been prolifically and prophetically plugging away at for well over a decade, carving out a reputation for ferociously uncompromising sonics with an inquisitive air. Having taken a pleasurable detour toward grinding synth pop on his 2011 releases Bermuda Drain and Time's Arrow, with Through the Window, Fernow convincingly throws himself to the growling hounds of techno.

Through The Window is an overtly theatrical body of work even by the standards of the worlds it straddles: the high camp of metal, the existential roar of noise, and techno's ritualism. Its three tracks even function like the three acts of the archetypal quest tale, spanning the journey, the obstacle, and the reward. "Through the Window" sets the scene for Prurient's techno rebirth before "Terracotta Spine" issues a blood-curdling screech of noisy resistance, which we're gratefully delivered from by the still-ominous yet tonally triumphant "You Show Great Spirit": our reward for endurance though, of course, there's joy to be found in the enduring itself. That final act builds seductively in waves, a delicious drowning that leaves the sharp tang of aluminum on the lips. While each track could be enjoyed on its own merits, the three tracks need one another, requiring the other's context and contrast.

Fernow's command of texture is in full, swaggering flow throughout. Underneath the pummeling rhythms of "Through the Window" lies a sea of writhing life-- adrenaline-laden breathing, static clicks, the prickling of erect hairs-- while, later, in the final moments of "You Show Great Spirit", we're left with the chip-chip-chink of metal against metal, fragments dropping to a stone floor. These are loose ends, sure, but all the more intriguing for it. There's a similar approach to melody too. It comes and goes, weaving in and out with a gently shifting intricacy yet refuses to submit to convention.

Unlike the aforementioned Time's Arrow and Bermuda Drain,which featured foregrounded vocals (somewhat controversially to noise purists), Fernow's voice drops to a barely discernible, deathly whisper on Through the Window. "Big things grow much bigger/ And need bigger things inside them," he intones archly, which could be read as a clue to his own evolution, and that of the wider noise scene. When sonics themselves have lost their power to shock and excite-- or when we are too comfortable with the old ways of feeling uncomfortable-- we look elsewhere to revive the sensation. Little wonder contemporary techno's diametric binding of ritualistic rhythms and elastic form appealed.

"Noise used to be a place that was devoid of expectations," Fernow told Tiny Mix Tapes in 2011. "But there are people who have been working 24 hours a day to make it into a genre of music like any other with a set of rules and regulations, which to me is the antithesis of noise ideology. So I have no problems with not being categorized as such, because that word has come to mean the opposite of what it should." Some 15 years on from his first Prurient album, it is thrilling to still hear the vigor in his searching; in his questioning of restrictions and extending of freedoms. This gripping chapter in his exploration might not quite be his definitive statement, but then definitive has never been of interest to Fernow.